the desired effect.
The four perpetrators were quickly arrested. Bunting was initially charged with one murder, that of Johnson. Fearing for his life, Vlassakis quickly rolled over and spilled the beans. Bodies were disinterred from the backyards of properties Bunting had previously rented, and it was eventually established that there were twelve victims, making this the serial murder case with the biggest body count in Australian history to date.
However, it is not so much the detail of the murders that interests me here, but rather the lasting impact: the stigma of this shocking event on the tiny rural town of Snowtown.
The immediate effect was to lead to a short-term economic boom as curious onlookers like me came to gawk at the bank building in the otherwise uninteresting out-of-the-way locale.
Some local businesses started producing and selling souvenirs, T-shirts, and fridge magnets featuring gallows humor, images and slogans punning around the use of the barrels—a form of what is known as “dark tourism.” People are fascinated by death and murder. Every city across Australia has its own crime tour. They are as popular as ghost tours. Grim reminders of our nation’s dark past. No different to most countries.
However, in addition to the morbid fascination of passersby, the town also became tainted by the lingering stench of death. The awful memories of what they found in that empty bank vault. In 2011, the local community proposed changing the name of the place to Rosetown to dissociate itself from the stigma of the infamous “Bodies in the Barrels” case.
That same year, a feature film based on the events was released across Australia on May 19. Simply called Snowtown, the film centered on a semi-fictional autobiographical account of John Bunting’s troubled background leading up to his becoming a serial killer.
The following year, 2012, saw the region’s only newspaper, the Broughton Star, close its doors, as if the town itself was putting up the shutters. Nothing of interest to see here anymore, folks. Move along.
So, the question that interests me is what the mood is like in Snowtown today, some twenty years removed from its moment of infamy. To try and find answers, I reached out from a great distance to the Wakefield Regional Council in rural South Australia to try and obtain some feedback.
The response I promptly received from a helpful staffer read:
“Thank you for your email. This was a horrible thing for our community to be involved in and the locals of Snowtown do not like to rehash and discuss the matter. As there were no locals physically affected by the murders, they would prefer to just leave it in the past.”
So, I did some digging of my own. One entity that asked a similar question and did get a response was the national broadcaster, the ABC network (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). They sent reporters in to gauge the mood of the town by chatting with some of its residents. The result is an online piece posted in 2019, “Life after Death: Dark Tourism and the Future of Snowtown” (Daniel Keane and Patrick Martin).
Dark tourism, also known as black tourism, grief tourism, and thanatourism, is a phenomenon only recently categorized, but which has been around for some time in an unofficial capacity. It is an expression of the desire of people to visit locales where terrible or evil events transpired. Such places have a certain dark aura about them and are appealing to tourists on a certain level.
Some of the more prominent examples are the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Chernobyl in the Ukraine, Hiroshima in Japan, and the site of the twin towers of 9/11 infamy in New York. No further explanation of these sites is needed, as the events surrounding them are firmly lodged in the human collective psyche. In the specific Australian context, there is Port Arthur in Tasmania, site of a terrible case of spree killing that almost singlehandedly led to casual gun ownership being banned in Australia. There is the Belanglo State Forest in New South Wales, site of the Ivan Milat backpacker murders, and now there is Snowtown.
It is worth mentioning that the Australian attitude toward gun ownership is the antithesis of the American practice. There is no Australian equivalent of a powerful lobby group like the NRA (National Rifle Association). In fact, after the Tasmanian Port Arthur massacre in 1996, the Australian government experienced intense public pressure to ban casual gun ownership. This was rapidly achieved across the country, with every state and territory government falling into line. Gun ownership is now heavily restricted to farmers on remote properties who need them for vermin control. In the time since Port Arthur and as of this writing, there have been zero gun-related massacres in Australia.
The old disused bank building still stands on Fourth Street today, despite the wishes of some locals for it to be demolished. Over the course of 2019, there has been much public debate in Snowtown as to whether the town should officially attempt to profit from its infamy.
While many locals would prefer to bury the past and ignore it, others hold the opposite view, that like it or not, the very name Snowtown will always be associated with the “Bodies in the Barrels” murders, and the townsfolk should trade on the infamy. As such, there have been moves to turn the abandoned bank building into a grisly museum, hosting props reflecting the murders and, of course, selling all manner of murder-related souvenirs.
Why not? some argue. Whitechapel, in the formerly neglected East End of London, is forever stained by memories of Jack the Ripper and has been cashing in on the fact for decades. Almost every night, dozens of Ripper walking tours plow the streets of the old East End, bumping onto one another, retracing the steps of the unfortunate women who met their terrible end at the Ripper’s blade. This writer has taken one such tour and enjoyed it immensely.
The contrasting view holds that the events in Snowtown still hold tragic memories for many people (though not necessarily those actually living in Snowtown) and dredging it all up again in the form of dark tourism could have a debilitating effect on the mental health of family, friends, and loved ones of the victims. This is also a fair point, which needs to be taken into consideration.
The obvious difference between Snowtown and Whitechapel is that the Ripper mythology was not cashed in on until around a century after the events of 1888. There was no one left connected to the crimes to be upset.
In another report broadcast on air in May 2019, the ABC spoke to several residents and former residents to gauge their opinion on the impact of the murders on their town. One individual commented that the producers of the movie based on the events did not even consult the local community before producing their factual account. This only served to further stigmatize the town and traumatize its residents.
The town suffers a double misfortune in that it bears the mark of the locale of the worst case of serial killing in Australian history and yet only one actual murder took place there. Eight other bodies were transported in to be discovered later. Bunting moved into the remote town and shipped the barrels in just as the police net was closing in. Those barrels could have been discovered in any of the various locations they were previously stored in, but the fact that the case broke in Snowtown will haunt them forever.
Snowtown was established in 1878, its main purpose to provide agricultural crops—cereal, wool, and livestock. It also sits on the cusp of a large salt mine at nearby Lake Bumbunga. Like many rural communities, it suffers the vagaries of distance and economic downturns. As of 2020, Snowtown is battling a persistent economic decline and a resultant dwindling population as young people in need of work move away to look elsewhere.
The town now faces the dilemma of deciding whether it should risk exploiting its dark past to possibly secure a brighter future. The problem stems from the recent proximity of the crimes. At just twenty years down the road, it may be too soon for Snowtown. Jack the Ripper, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, even Chernobyl, are all further in the past.
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